UW looking for husky donors

Published 9:00 pm Thursday, September 6, 2001

By Bryan Corliss

Herald Writer

SEATTLE — University of Washington Business School deans want to inject a little Husky fever into potential donors and raise $200 million for new facilities, programs and instructors.

UW alums "love their football, but they’ve never really been approached to be engaged with their academic past," said Pete Lasher ,the school’s associate dean for external relations.

The Boeing Co.’s $1 million donation last week was a big help, Dean Yash Gupta said. But the school needs to tap potential donors who are moving their businesses to town, not just those that are leaving, he said.

Gupta and his senior staff outlined their goals for the business school at a meeting with reporters Thursday.

The school is making strides, the educators asserted. In U.S. News and World Report rankings, the UW Business School moved up from No. 21 to No. 16 in the nation, Gupta said.

Some of the changes are small.

Working with a brand-name expert, the school has settled on one name that it will go by — the UW Business School, not the school of business or the school of business administration, Gupta said. Official publications have carried all three names in the past, he added.

The school is trying to build a focus on technology and entrepreneurship, said Gary Sundem, the associate dean for masters degree and executive education programs.

The tech wreck of the past year pointed out a glaring need, Sundem said. Dotcoms "didn’t fail because of their technology," he said. "They failed because of their business."

Executive education programs — short courses of several weeks or months — also will be an important growth area, and "may be the dominant thing in the business school 20 years from now," Sundem said.

Undergraduate educations are out-of-date within a decade, he said. "The successful schools will be those that meet that marketplace."

The school also wants to expand its doctorate programs, Gupta said. The nation is facing a shortage of business professors in the next few years, as baby boomers who entered the field in the ’60s start retiring.

At the undergraduate level, the school plans to launch a finance major program this spring, said Pete Dukes, the associate dean for undergraduate education.

It also has developed a new business honors program and has started admitting top freshman applicants directly to the school rather than making them wait to apply as sophomores.

The undergraduate program also is reaching out to would-be entrepreneurs in nonbusiness majors, such as technology, Gupta said.

To make the changes requires money. The school wants to erect a new, privately funded building, the first UW building built solely from donations.

It also needs money to hire faculty, $30 million to $40 million, Lasher said. The school is now short about 25 faculty positions, and it will have to replace 19 professors who will retire within the next five years, Gupta said.

And the school needs to attract top-flight students to "create an environment where everyone learns together," Gupta said. To that end, "scholarships are very, very critical."

The plan is to sell naming rights, said Lasher. For $50 million, a company or individual could have the UW Business School named after them.

And for "eight figures," the rights to naming the new building could be yours too, Lasher said.

Doing that will be a challenge. Last year, the school raised $11.4 million, almost four times the donations it generated two years prior.

"We need to continue charting on that," Lasher said, "and build relationships with people who can write those big checks."